56 Up Film Analysis

The documentary presented in class, 56 Up (2012), was a film based on the lives of 13 individuals who lived in England, that were from very diverse backgrounds. These 13 individuals participated in an experiment that started when they were seven years old and every seven year they were interviewed. Individuals were asked questions about their lives, helping to examine their progression and understand their development over the years of their life. In class only 10 individuals were examined in the class. The concepts/theories that I will be using in my paper will be Sociocultural Context, Individual Differences, and the fifth stage. Identity vs Role Confusion, in Erickson’s theory to help me analyze the development of the individuals’ lives presented in the film.
The first specific concept that I have chosen to discuss is the Sociocultural Context concept. The Sociocultural Context is based on a child’s environment which, when combined, can impact the development of a child, this includes the environmental, physical, cultural, social, and historical aspects of a child’s life (Siegler et al., 2014, pp. 17). This concept applies to the film because of the fact that the individuals in the film had completely diverse environments when they were children that impacted each individual differently. A prime example is the individual, Symon.
But with that strength there comes a weakness, that the sample should have been more diverse. The sample was diverse in the way that they all had completely different backgrounds and experiences, but the sample should have had individuals from other countries to see if people of different ethnicities also have the same developmental patterns. If the sample was more diverse I would expect to see some differences because different cultures have different social norms and cultural